


In the Crosshairs

by withasideofangst



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes is my feels pincushion, Bucky Barnes is the bat in the belfry of the Tower, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky is kind of a stalker, Ceiling Vent Bucky Barnes, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Prank War, There are no AoU spoilers in here, Tony Clint and Bucky could snark the world to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withasideofangst/pseuds/withasideofangst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days after Steve Rogers is released from the hospital after being found on the shores of the Potomac River, the first HYDRA agents try to kill him in his apartment.</p>
<p>On the sixth attempt, Bucky, still working his way out of HYDRA's programming, has to get involved.</p>
<p>That's not the only time the ex-Winter Soldier has to save the life of an Avenger.</p>
<p>Then, not ready to be seen by any of them yet, he kind of starts haunting the Tower.</p>
<p>There are accidents and gifts and prank wars involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Under Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I will be posting a new chapter twice a week. Probably on Sundays and Wednesdays, but I might post a day earlier/later if I'm really busy.
> 
> This has been beta'd, but any mistakes left are all my own.
> 
> Also, this fic has been all written already, but if any of you start wanting to send me prompts, I'll definitely accept them. Although I have...a Nat/Bucky Red Room one next, three stucky fics, a 40s!Peggy & Bucky fic, and a zombie shorts Avengers series in the works next, so it might be a bit.

Three days after Steve Rogers is released from the hospital after being found on the shores of the Potomac River, the first HYDRA agents try to kill him in his apartment.

They are shot by SHIELD snipers in the building across the street, because even if Rogers hadn't realized that HYDRA knowing his address was inevitably going to end badly, Fury and the new Director had.

Two weeks and four attempts on his life later, including a nearly successful poisoning attempt by tampering with his morning coffee while he was out (Sam saved him on that one, he spotted the tiny silvery traces of the poison powder in the coffee grounds), and even Rogers has to admit he needs to move.

Sam is helping him pack up the last of his things when the sixth attempt happens.

Steve is in his room, carefully placing his sketchbooks in a box with the few novels he owns when he hears the creak of floorboards behind him.

"Oh hey Sam, you done alre-"

Steve has half turned around when he hears the sound of breaking glass and the familiar crack of a sniper's shot, and the HYDRA agent about to knife him in the back falls down dead.

Sam comes running in the room at the thump, and Steve raises a shaky hand to his earpiece, turning on the microphone.

"I don't know which agent is out there right now, but thanks," he says, his voice barely shaking, to the SHIELD sniper on duty.

There is silence on the line for a moment, then light static as the sniper turns on their mic.

"That wasn't me, Captain. I...I missed him, I think he snuck in through a blind spot."

Steve doesn’t remember the agent's name, but he recognizes his voice even as it shook with concern and fear. He'd met the agent a few days ago, barely more than a kid.

Then his brain processes the agent's words.

"Then who took the shot?" Steve asks, turning to Sam, who also has an earpiece in and is looking at Steve with the same alarmed expression Steve guesses he is wearing.

Both men drop to the floor instantly, even as Steve's brain tells him the sniper has had plenty of time to shoot him - or just let the HYDRA agent get him - if the unknown sniper wasn’t a friendly.

They still sneak out of the apartment as if they could be in the crosshairs of a rifle anyway.

After Coulson stops yelling at the poor kid who'd been on duty, and at Steve and Sam for allowing themselves to be in the crosshairs of an unknown assailant for over a minute before reacting, they try to figure out if they have any allies in the area who could have assisted, but no one takes the credit when contacted.

Steve immediately thinks of Bucky, and opens his mouth to say so, but when he catches Sam's eye,  Sam shakes his head ever so slightly, and Steve bites his tongue but stays quiet.  The Winter Soldier being Steve's old best friend had not gone over well with SHIELD,  and it was not a popular subject in the wake of the destruction of most of SHIELD.

Instead of allowing Steve to return to the apartment, Coulson sends a team of armed agents to retrieve the last of his belongings, then he packs Steve and Sam into an armored train car and sends them on their way to Avengers Tower.

Sam had been invited to move in by Tony after he'd been told about the takedown of SHIELD (the first thing out of his mouth was "I told you so," followed by several inquiries about this Falcon person and his wings), and Sam now has a floor in the tower and is officially on the Avengers' backup roster. He'd agreed after finding out the New York chapter of the VA was more than willing to transfer him to their offices.

And so Sam rides along with Steve in silence as Steve tries to shake the horrible leftover itch under his skin, which he has had since realizing someone has been watching him, could have killed him, and chose not to, but who clearly isn’t willing to admit to saving him. Even if it really is Bucky,  he knows that means the Winter Soldier is in there too,  probably wanting to finish his mission. He hadn't, of course, but that just makes Steve miss his friend even more.

\---

For nearly a month, Steve isn’t allowed out of the tower without at least three agents watching his every move, armed and ready to shoot any threat to his life, for all that Steve insists he has his shield and could take care of himself.

Since walking around with trained killers is somewhat conspicuous even in New York City, Steve primarily stays indoors, while the agents kill time on a guest floor Tony grudgingly allows them, not happy about housing anyone associated with SHIELD in his home.

To be honest, Steve isn’t that happy about them either lately, but he trusts Coulson, once he gets over the whole not-dead thing. And he signs the new set of Captain America trading cards Coulson managed to dig up. (Steve didn’t ask how much he paid for them, but he has a sneaking suspicion Stark was involved.)

Finally, when he's going stir-crazy from being locked up when all he wants to do is track down the trail of the Winter Soldier - of _Bucky_ \- the Avengers are called for a mission in the middle east, where a HYDRA cell had been found and suspected still active.

Barton, Natasha, Sam, and Steve are sent, Thor busy in Asgard and Bruce and Stark excused since _stealth_ is not a word in either of their vocabularies. Sam joins them for his first official mission, instead. He and Barton spend most of the plane ride there driving Steve insane while they make an _unreasonable_ number of bird jokes,  Natasha looking on in silence, with the tiniest smile on her face when Steve fixes her with a pleading stare for help.

Off the jet, Barton takes a sniper position to their rear, several quivers of arrows on hand, while Sam is on stand-by on a nearby roof on the opposite side (because wings are not exactly stealthy either), ready to intervene if needed.  Steve and Natasha are the main offensive, attempting to sneak in the seemingly abandoned building in the heart of a town long since emptied during the war.

They nearly make it inside undetected, until several dozen men appear from seemingly every hidden nook and cranny, but they aren't _really_ in trouble until the two snipers start taking shots at them. One gets a little too close to his mark and Steve feels the wind from it on the side of his helmet, but Nat isn’t so lucky, as one of the agents on the ground gets a bullet through her calf and another through her thigh when she is distracted, dodging the other sniper’s shots.

She stumbles and rolls to shelter behind a building, and Steve joins her, while Hawkeye starts picking off the men shooting at them. Falcon is grounded until they can find the enemy snipers, and Steve knows he can’t get Natasha out while taking fire.

Natasha assures him she is fine, and he launches himself out again after the men who managed to avoid Hawkeye's arrows, only to get a sniper shot to the shoulder for his trouble. Launching himself into the shadow of another building, he hears Hawkeye in his ear, saying he took out one of the snipers, and he gives the location of the other to Sam, who takes him out with a shot without ever landing, before returning to help Natasha.

Steve takes out several more agents, only to be replaced by more streaming from the building, and he is wondering how the hell HYDRA manages to find all these people, when suddenly there are two sharp cracks, and two agents sneaking up on him collapse to the ground. Steve feels the hairs on the back of his neck instantly stand on end, and immediately knows he is being watched.

Another shot, and out of the corner of his eye, he watches another HYDRA agent fall, then Sam comes over to him with Natasha, leg wrapped and walking, but he can detect the slightest limp in her step.  Steve knows better than to even suggest she sit out the rest of the mission.

"Barton, please tell me that you somehow moved position and got a rifle, and that's you taking these guys out," Steve says grimly, throwing his shield at another group of agents - their numbers finally dwindling - then catching it as it ricochets back to him while Natasha and Sam provide cover from his 8 'o clock.

"That's a negative, Cap. You've got a mystery sniper again. I don't have a read on hi-"

Barton's voice cuts off as Steve's serum-aided hearing catches the crack of a hit far behind him, where Barton is positioned.

With no new HYRDA agents approaching anymore, Steve glances back towards Barton, calling for his status over the coms. He hears Sam and Natasha echoing him in his earpiece.

There is no response for a long moment, long enough for Steve to get really concerned, and then Barton is back on the line.

"The mystery sniper is a friendly," he says, and Steve and Natasha share a worried glance when they catch the slightest tremble in his voice.

"How do you know?" Natasha demands.

"Because he just took out someone on my six. The guy was close enough to put a bullet in my brain, and I never would have heard him." Sam joins their exchange of concerned glances.

"Which means," Barton continues, "he knows my position. There's no point even relocating. If he wanted me dead, I would be. And so would all of you," he adds, his voice grim and somewhat strained.

They all have to suck in a breath before getting ready to enter the HYDRA base, but a single shot is fired well in front of them when they head for the entrance. They freeze in their tracks. It is the first even _slightly_ aggressive move towards them that the sniper has made, but it is also clear the shot wasn’t meant to hit them.

Testing the situation, Steve holds out an arm for the others to remain in place as he takes a single step forward, and a shot rings out again, this time hitting the ground three feet in front of his foot.

"I don't think he wants us to go in, Steve says, half-turned back towards the others.

"No _shit_ ," Barton breathes in his ear.

"Language," Steve warns.

Natasha turns to Steve and is about to say something when Steve hears the faintest click  behind the walls around the HYDRA building. There is silence for a moment, and if the sniper is signalling them again, none of them get the meaning.  Then half the building explodes.

The force is enough to blow them off their feet, but they are far enough away to avoid any serious injuries. Natasha lands on her leg again, however, and she groans once as she gets to her feet again, leaning on Sam while Steve holds out his gun cautiously.

"Did he just...?" Steve's voice drifts off, glancing back at the other two.

Barton's mic chirps in his ear.

"That was definitely our mystery friend. I think he triggered explosives - he must have planted them before we even got here."

None of them seem to know what to do next, and Sam, Natasha, and Steve are all acutely aware that they are likely still in the sniper’s crosshairs. Steve catches Sam’s eye, and he can tell Sam also thinks it could be Bucky - except it might not fully be _Bucky_ behind the wheel.

Steve is about to say something when Natasha limps forward into the now deathly quiet street in front of the now-ruined base, away from any cover and looking in the general direction of the sniper fire.

"Natasha, what the hell are you -" Barton starts, and she pulls out her earpiece. Sam and Steve share a glance again as Barton continues yelling in their ears, then they slowly step out after her.

Now Barton's practically growling at them, too.

“If all of you get killed, this is _entirely_ your faults.”

Natasha ignores them all, mouthing something, but no sounds come out. A moment later a single shot rings out again, hitting the ground a good ten feet in front of her, and she holds out an arm to stop Steve from approaching her, seeming unconcerned by the shot, and she continues to mouth words in the direction of the sniper.

"What the hell is going on?" Sam mutters quietly, and Steve shrugs, eyes searching the many towering buildings in front of them for the location of their 'friend.'

He really, _really_ hopes it is Bucky.

Barton has gone quiet as they all stand in the easy range of another sniper, ignoring the burning building less than fifty feet away.

After what is probably only minutes but feels like hours, the silence only occasionally broken by the sounds of a collapsing, burning building or the occasional gunshot from the sniper in reply to something Natasha mouthed, Natasha turns around and walks back towards them, then past them, limping back toward Barton and their rendezvous point.

Steve and Sam catch up quickly, Sam returning to her side, helping her walk.

"Mind sharing what just happened back there?" Steve asks a lot more mildly than he feels.

"He could read my lips. I told him who we are and asked if he was an ally, and so on. He claims he is an ally but he definitely didn’t want to meet us face-to-face. He's the same guy who helped you in DC, Steve, and he was hunting HYDRA before we got here. We stumbled on _his_ op after he rigged the base to blow, not the other way around. I don't think he wanted us to know he was here, but if we stepped in the building we would have blown up too."

A voice in the back of Steve’s brain dimly points out that might have been the most he’s heard her speak at once in quite a while.

Natasha turns around when Steve doesn’t reply, and she frowns slightly when she sees his expression.

"Steve?

He shakes himself, still following after her and Sam.

"I...I think..." he trails off.

"You think he's the Winter Soldier," she finishes for him, and Steve hears Barton and Sam suck in a breath at the same time.

Steve nods weakly.

"I think he is _Bucky_ ," he corrects automatically.

No one replies for a moment, and then Natasha ever so slightly nods.

"I think you might be right," she says.

 


	2. Return Shot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a demon, and I feed off your angst and kudos and hits on this fic, and damn, this is getting a lot more than I was afraid of. Thank you, guys, for keeping my evil demon soul alive. And like my last fic, I might do a “comments = faster updates” later.
> 
> Waiting to post chapters when I have them done is the worst thing ever, I swear. But I'm using the time to write the next fic, so that's something.
> 
> So, yeah. Enjoy. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> -flees the pitchforks-

Steve and Sam get Natasha to Barton and then Sam takes off to backtrack and see if he can spot where the possibly-Bucky sniper went.

If Steve is being completely honest with himself, he knows he’s still a bit worried the sniper might shoot Sam, even if it is Bucky, if the Winter Soldier is still in control. But they have to try, and Sam is the only one who can get there over the uneven terrain and have any hope of spotting him.

Even so, Sam returns fairly quickly, shaking his head in response to Barton asking if he had any luck.

Steve isn’t sure if he is disappointed or relieved.

\---

When they get back to Avengers Tower, Coulson and Fury berate them over a video link for letting a possibly-hostile sniper _once again_ get them in his or her crosshairs, and then Stark waves the link off and has his turn making jokes.

All the Avengers agree that the sniper is probably the Winter Soldier.

As to whether or not that is a good thing, their reactions vary.

Natasha cautions Steve that Bucky would definitely still be under the effect of much of HYDRA’s programming, and that he is not the same person Steve used to know.

Barton mostly stays quiet, but remarks on how the sniper saved his life, and that the sniper was clearly taking down the HYDRA base before the Avengers even arrived.

Banner and Thor agree that he probably is an ally, but still very dangerous.  They both warn against assuming it is the old Bucky in control at all, and Thor makes the Asgardian version of comparing trusting Bucky completely to having a mountain lion for a housecat.  (All those present for that statement spend a good few minutes gaping at Thor for the comment.)

Stark takes the whole thing as a joke, but Steve doesn’t miss the stiffness in his face when he first hears the news.  He hears from Pepper later that in the wake of the collapse of SHIELD and HYDRA, Stark was reading their exposed files and found out that the Winter Soldier had murdered his parents.

Steve was shocked, but Pepper assured him that Tony didn’t blame Bucky for it, he understood it had been the Winter Soldier in control, but after that Steve found he wouldn’t blame Stark if he didn’t want Bucky anywhere near him.

Still, that doesn’t mean Steve can stop looking.

However, months pass without any news.  The only trail at all is a quiet path of destruction wrought by some “unknown third party” as they frankly _demolish_ HYDRA bases across the eastern hemisphere, including many SHIELD hadn’t had an inkling even existed.

Steve once again spends most of his time hunting Bucky’s trail, trying to find a base he hasn’t hit yet, but he is always slightly behind.

Finally, one of Natasha’s contacts comes forward with knowledge of a HYDRA base in the mountains of the Czech Republic.

Well aware they might run into the Winter Soldier there, only Steve, Natasha, Barton, Sam, and Thor go.  They leave the tower less than an hour after they get the news, and in the jet that Stark had built once the team moved into the tower, they get there only a few hours later.

To Steve’s relief, the base is still intact when they arrive.  They’d finally beaten Bucky there.

They quickly come up with a strategy.  Steve and Natasha are positioned close to the base again, hiding in the cover of the forest surrounding them. Sam is perched in a tree nearby (Steve rolls his eyes when Sam and Barton start cracking jokes again), and Barton is in a tree on the opposite side, waiting with both his normal array of arrows and a new set of tranq arrows, with a dosage that could even take Steve down.  (They’d tested it.  One of the too-large doses knocked him out for over a day.)  Together, the four of them are roughly evenly spaced out in a circle around the base.  Thor is ordered to stay back, as both the easiest to spot with his red cape glaringly obvious in a forest, and because he is only there as backup in case they need to subdue the Winter Soldier to take him in.

The plan is to wait until just before sunset.   If the Winter Soldier still hasn’t appeared,  they have to take out the base on their own, and look for information leading to other bases,  where they can try again.   Steve is all for waiting until Bucky shows up, regardless of how long it takes, but he is out-voted.  The risk of discovery is too high, and there will likely be no information left on their computers by the time they get to them, if they are discovered.  Not to mention HYDRA could call for some of the seemingly never-ending reinforcements they always seem to have on hand.

Hours later, night has long since fallen, and the team prepares to assault the facility.

“All right,” Steve says quietly over the coms, “he’s not showing, today at least. We move in as planned.  On my count…”

Seamlessly, Steve and Natasha move in together, while Sam quickly grabs Barton and flies to the roof of the building.

On Steve’s signal, both groups move in.

The fight is quick, if a bit bloody.  Steve take a bullet to the upper arm, not enough to do more than slow him down slightly, Barton gets a knife slash to the side of his torso during a hand-to-hand fight with several HYDRA agents, and Sam is skimmed by a bullet, only missing his leg by a hair because Natasha jumps the agent from behind at the last moment.

But compared to other HYDRA bases, the fight is rather easy.

Too easy.

They grab all the data from the computers and Natasha uploads it to JARVIS before uploading a virus that will infect any other machine or server they are made to interact with again, then they are all making their wait out.

All of them are tense, fearing a trap.

But that doesn’t stop them from walking into one anyway.

The moment they step outside, they are surrounded.  Steve manages to get his shield up and he and Natasha crouch behind it, running back under cover of the doorway they just came from, while Sam manages to grab Barton and fly them back to the roof as Barton shoots arrows into several of the enemy agents.  Immediately, Barton takes cover and continues picking them off, while Steve and Natasha whisper hurriedly to come up with a plan of attack.

Steve calls Thor in, screwing their initial plan, but all the backup in the world won’t help them catch Bucky if they die first.  Thor arrives quickly, hammer swinging and calling down lightning, and the HYDRA agents scatter.

Barton and Sam are preparing to get off the roof when a shot hits Barton in his shoulder.

He gasps as he goes down.  Sam immediately grabs him as Steve and Natasha both frantically call for Barton over the coms, and Sam has to assure them it isn’t a lethal wound.   They don’t seem to hear him until Barton replies too, clearly alive, if in quite a lot of pain.

The loss of their sniper forces Steve and Natasha to change plans, however, and with Natasha sporting fewer wounds than Steve, she is the one to stay in the front with Sam guarding Barton and picking off agents when they come in range of his handguns, which isn't as often as he might prefer.

Steve, meanwhile, is sneaking around the back, picking off several agents but aiming for the approximate location of the sniper.  Thor is taking his place in the front, but they all know they need the sniper gone ASAP.

It doesn’t take long for Steve to find him, and he charges the agent before he can even realize he's been found, ramming both him and the rifle, causing a shot aimed at Thor's back to go wide.  Thor doesn’t even pause swinging his hammer, but Steve can hear him grunt his thanks over the coms.

Then Natasha is in his ear.

"Steve, you've got the vantage point now.  Find me a way out with Barton," she orders.

Steve squints, but even his serum-improved vision won’t let him see a clear path from several hundreds of feet away.

So he picks up the rifle, which has a significant bend in it from where the shield hit it, careful to keep his finger off the trigger, and quickly skims the area around Natasha.

He sees a clear path quickly and relates it to her, and he can see her nod once in his direction as she waves Sam and Barton over, as Thor moves closer to help her provide cover.

Steve keeps an eye on the dwindling number of remaining agents, calling out a few to Thor, who immediately throws his hammer at them, and they go down like rocks.

Until his vision lands on one agent in particular.

And the all-too-familiar black combat suit and the metal arm.

Steve nearly drops the rifle.

"Bucky," He gasps, and even as several voices chime at him from his earpiece, he sees Bucky look right at him.

The gaze is flat, cold, but it is missing some of the anger that was present on the bridge and in the hellicarrier.

However small, Steve will take it.

Bucky slams his metal fist into an agent creeping up on him without turning his head away, and through the scope, Steve can see confusion flicker across his face for the briefest moment, before he opens his mouth, as if he wants to say something.

Then the rifle jerks in Steve's hands, and for a moment he doesn’t know what happened.

Then he processes the sharp cracking sound, and he sees the blood.  And the look of shock on Bucky's face as the bullet goes through his flesh-and-blood shoulder.

_Misfire_ , his brain screams.

"BUCKY!" is all that comes out of his mouth, and he runs as fast as he can toward the dark shape rapidly disappearing into the woods.

_Oh god, oh god, I SHOT him_ , his brain repeats in a loop.

"Steve, what happened?" He hears Sam call over the coms, and he realizes he said that out loud.

"The rifle misfired," He screams back, not bothering to keep the desperation out of his voice. "Oh god, he thinks I shot him on purpose.  Oh god..."  He trails off as he misses a step and falls, crashing into the ground.  There is no trace of Bucky anywhere, and once again he is just chasing a ghost.

The rest of the night passes with Steve in a half-catatonic state, miserable and muttering to himself, and Sam has to sit with him on the flight home as Natasha patches up Barton, while Thor returns to Asgard, unneeded at the moment now that Bucky is definitely out of their sights.

When they return to the tower and Natasha explains to Tony what happened, Tony is actually left speechless for a moment, and Sam herds Steve into his apartment before he regains control of his mouth.

Neither Steve nor Sam sleeps at all that night.

 


	3. The Soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in finals week and panicking out my final projects while trying to get ready for a con in a week, so you're getting the new chapter a day early.
> 
> I swear after this, it's not all angst. Next chapter there's some since Steve is still worried over Bucky (of course), and, well, they both have some issues since he just shot Bucky, but after that, we'll be getting to the fun part, I promise.
> 
> And although it will make me lose a couple days to work on the next fic, since this chapter is shorter, I'll offer you guys this - to get past the last really angsty stuff all together, if this chapter gets comments from five different people (and no, my replies don't count) before the next scheduled update day (Wednesday), I'll post the next chapter and you'll still get an update on Wednesday.
> 
> Edit: 1 comment to go for the early update, and one day left. :)

The soldier flees, the wound in his shoulder barely registering as he runs, faster and faster the more he tires.

He isn’t quite the asset anymore, and he isn’t Bucky Barnes, the name his targ- the name Steve Rogers, Captain America, keeps calling him.

He barely remembers who Bucky Barnes was, but he knows that he definitely isn’t him.  He’s just the soldier left over, a mix of the two echoes in his head.

But he knows that Steve Rogers wants to help Bucky Barnes, and even though the solder isn’t Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers seems to want to help the soldier, too.

So when he saw Captain America and his teammates being shot at the first time, about to enter a base he had already rigged to blow, he intervened, even though it meant somewhat exposing himself.

He’d been surprised to see Natalia again, but he could just barely remember meeting her twice.  Once, during the time HYDRA had sent him to train the Red Room operatives, and once on a mission.  He’d shot her, he thinks he remembers.

He doubts she will forgive the soldier for that, even if he is no longer _only_ the asset.

But she had signaled him, and he had replied, and then he fled once he was sure they were safe.

Then, when he arrived at one of the smaller HYDRA bases left, intending only to stop long enough to blow the base before moving on to a larger target, he saw the alien man with the hammer waiting, the one the others called a god, and he saw and heard the quiet noises of the rest of the Captain’s team waiting for something.

Waiting for the soldier, he realizes.

He has no intention of getting involved.  He has to make an effort to not outright attack them, when the asset’s training still inside him feels like destroying them for even attempting to trap him.

But when HYDRA springs their (rather obvious, the soldier thought) trap, he has to intervene when it becomes apparent there are too many for the blonde god and the others to defeat once the bow-sniper is down.

It isn’t hard to avoid detection by the blonde god.  He rages around the battlefield without the control of a soldier, his attention entirely focused on the enemies who stood immediately before him.  He fights more like a beast than the assassins and agents the soldier and the asset are used to.

He is considerably more careful to avoid being anywhere near Natalia’s line of sight, sticking to the edges of the battlefield and picking off anyone near the sides or the back.

He is doing well, and he can tell none of the team suspects he is there, until he feels a prickle on the back of his neck, and he looks up to where he knew a HYDRA sniper had been until a moment ago.  He’d avoided the sniper’s attention too, but all his instincts as the asset are telling him he is being watched now.

Looking up, he feels his eyes meet the man’s.

Even from the long distance, he knows it is the Captain. _Bucky Barnes’_   Steve Rogers.

And the tiny amount of Bucky Barnes he remembers screams for him to stay, to talk to the Captain.

But the asset screams just as loudly - _louder_ \- that the Captain is his mission.

Torn, the solder doesn’t move.  The Captain seems similarly frozen, staring back.

He opens his mouth, despite not knowing what he wants to say.

And then he hears the shot.

He is too surprised for even his training as the asset to move him out of the way in time.

The bullet slices straight through his flesh shoulder, and dimly in the back of the soldier’s brain, Bucky Barnes is impressed by the shot.  For an untrained sniper, the shot is a fluke - and the Bucky Barnes from the 1940s knows the shot had to be a misfire.

But the asset doesn’t believe that.  And the soldier isn’t sure.  After all, he really isn’t Bucky Barnes anymore.  He has murdered far more than enough people to deserve being shot.

He just hadn’t really expected the Captain to be the one to follow through, after he had stopped fighting the asset on the helicarrier.

So as he hears the Captain’s teammates yell after him, finally realizing his presence, he bolts through the forest, fleeing the footsteps he can hear behind him.  The footsteps slowly grow fainter as the soldier gains distance from him, having already scouted the terrain.

It doesn’t take long for him to lose the Captain completely, and disappear back into the dark.

 


	4. Cleaned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, only 4/5 comments happened on the last chapter, so sorry, no double updates, but here's the last mostly-angst chapter before things start getting more fun.

There is no sign of Bucky for weeks.

The Avengers try to assure Steve that he is probably just healing, and he will be back.

But Steve can’t shake the fear that the Winter Soldier in Bucky’s head would think he really wanted to kill him.  He knows that if Bucky believes that, none of the Avengers will ever be able to find him if he disappears.

But Steve knows that he won’t be able to find Bucky as it is now either, while he is purposefully being avoided.

So he does what he can, and returns to hunting down HYDRA bases and taking them out.

A little more than two months after the misfire, the Avengers arrive at a HYDRA base to find it eerily empty.  Immediately, Steve calls back to Barton and Natasha who are covering the rear exit, as he and Sam begin clearing the base.

They swiftly move through the building, and while they find splatters of blood in several rooms, there is no one in sight.

Eventually they meet with the others in one of the lowest levels, where Natasha is busy uploading the information on the computers to JARVIS again using a blood-splattered keyboard.

“No one?” Barton asks, grimly meeting Steve’s eye.

Steve shakes his head.

“Someone beat us here,” Sam adds.

Before Steve can open his mouth, Natasha mutters quietly.

“It’s him.  This is the Winter Soldier’s style.”

Steve winces, and Sam and Barton turn to look at her.

She is frowning slightly.

“Except the Winter Soldier wouldn’t move the bodies.  It serves no tactical advantage on the mission, and would take more time, risking exposure.”

“What does that mean, then?” Sam asks.

Natasha meets Steve’s eye and he knows she can read his expression.  He doesn’t want to know what look is on his face.

“I don’t think he wanted you to see what he had done.”

“He did this for Steve?”  Sam asks, but he doesn’t sound that surprised.

Natasha glances at him.  “He wouldn’t do it for anyone else.”

“Well, Cap,” Barton says with a half-smirk, “guess your old army buddy is now stalking you.  No one told him what normal people get as I’m-not-dead gifts?  Someone needs to get him to talk to Coulson.”

Steve stares at him but can’t think of a thing to say.

Natasha saves him from needing to by smacking Barton on the back of the head.

“Hey, that hurts,” he says, ducking his head, then dodges to the side when she glances at him.  “Uncle, uncle,” he adds, raising his hands in surrender.

The four of them spend another couple hours hunting down any scrap of paper or other information that looks useful, then they set charges to blow the place, since it is far enough away from any city to cause any collateral damage.

They are almost out the door when Steve sees the gleam of metal.

He stops suddenly, his heart beating too fast, and Sam nearly walks into him.

Ignoring the eyes watching him, he bends down and picks up the small metal plate, lying next to a few drops of blood.

He stares at it until he feels Natasha’s hand on his shoulder.

“It’s from his arm,” he says numbly, and watches her eyes tighten.

“He’s okay,” she says slowly.

He doesn’t speak again while they leave the base, walking away with Nat’s hand on his arm, barely paying enough attention to hear the explosion behind them as they walk away.

The entire ride home, he sits in the back silently with Sam as Natasha and Barton fly the jet, cradling the metal sliver in his palm as if it were his friend, whole.

\---

The next several months pass for Steve in a repetitive blur, finding a HYDRA base and arriving only to find it already cleared, but after the first time there is never any blood.

Rather than comforting Steve, he knows, like the others do, that the eerie cleanliness only means the Winter Soldier has started wiping the scenes when he is done.

Now he has no indication at all if his best friend is okay, or just collecting wounds from each mission.

Steve has started to wonder if this is all Bucky is willing to give him, when upon entry to the latest HYDRA agent’s home they’d found, a fancy mansion outside a fairly large town, Natasha holds out a hand and he freezes.

Glancing around for what had made her pause, his eye sticks on the round table in the middle of the room, HYDRA’s symbol carved into it.

Around it, six chairs are stained red.

But what Natasha is staring at is not the table, but what is on it.

A note, carefully placed in the middle of the table.

Steve reaches out and picks it up with shaking fingers.

_No more heads_ , it says.   _Only the body left_.

He flips over the card.

_Sorry_.

Steve’s hand is shaking so hard, he nearly crumples the note.

“Steve?” Barton asks, not having been able to read the note over his shoulder like Natasha had.

He passes him the note silently.

“He’s sorry?”  Barton asks.  “Sorry for what?”

Steve glances helplessly at Natasha, but she is sharing a knowing look with Sam.

“What?” He demands.

“He thinks we think he’s still dangerous,” Sam says quietly.

“He is,” Natasha adds grimly, and stares Steve down when he glares at her.

“Denying it doesn’t make it less true,” she says, allowing a hint of annoyance to color her voice.  “It doesn’t mean we need to lock him up.  All of us here are dangerous.  But don’t fool yourself into thinking he isn’t too.”

Steve takes the card back from Barton, flipping it over in his hand.

“He still thinks I meant to shoot him,” he mutters.

“Part of him, maybe,” Sam says quietly.  “But part of him knows you didn’t, Cap, or he wouldn’t be here.”

After a long pause, Barton shifts quietly behind him.

“Is everyone just going to ignore that he’s saying the heads of HYDRA are all dead?”

Natasha glares at him, but there isn’t any heat in it.

Steve sighs.

“If it’s true,” he says, pulling himself out of his thoughts, “we can finally end this.  Find the remaining ‘limbs’ and sever them, and end it once and for all.”

He can feel the others looking at him.

“Maybe then he’ll come home,” he mutters, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“Yeah, Steve,” Sam says quietly, and puts a hand on his shoulder.

 


	5. Gifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, because I've been horrible to you all with all the angst, and also because I just realized that without my laptop this weekend (I'll be at a con), I can't update on Saturday or Sunday, instead of posting a day late, you're getting a second chapter today.
> 
> The next one will be a week from now, though, but at least this one is longer and more fun.
> 
> (There's one Russian word used, meaning in the notes at the end of the chapter.)

_BARTON_

 

Barton feels the bow string snap and immediately has to stamp down disbelief.

It is _just his luck_.

He is in the middle of a goddamn mission, of _course_ his bow gives out on him now.  Not in the middle of the hours of training he does every week.

He dives back for cover as the enemy realizes his fire has ceased, and he checks his backup rifle and curses.  He has far too few bullets for the number of remaining agents, and his backup bowstring had been damaged when he’d needed it as a garrott after being cornered close-quarters in an ambush earlier.

Natasha is going to beat the crap out of him for this one, he thinks grimly.  He is never going to hear the end of it.

A few enemy agents get too cocky in the lack of fire, and seemingly forget he’s also trained for close-quarters combat, as they try to sneak up on him and rapidly learn their mistake when his bow becomes a makeshift dagger through their chests.  It breaks on the third one’s ribs, and he switches to two small daggers for the remaining few.

He’s still in a tight spot, but he’s not going down easily.

Then he hears the sound of several more agents approaching, and glances around for a way out.  He has cover from the enemy sniper’s fire but he’s still at risk of being overrun if they send enough men.

The best way out seems to be the vents he came in.  Risky, if they figure out where he is, since they’re by no means bulletproof, but they’re his best bet, and he mapped them out pretty well on the way in.

He slips into one under cover of a smoke grenade, and shimmies his way through the tight space until he makes it to the more open main vents.

Where he finds a new bow and more arrows.

He squints at them in the low light and then glances around, but there is no one in sight, and after remaining motionless for a long minute, he can’t even detect any vibrations in the vents indicating the presence of another.

Upon closer inspection, the bow looks suspiciously like one of his spares.

His coms have been out since he entered the building - some kind of shielding - so he knows it isn’t anyone from his team.

But he knows it isn’t Natasha, since she’s on another mission.

Abruptly a chill runs down his back as he fully realizes someone has been watching him without his knowledge, closely enough to know his bow broke less than ten minutes ago.

He never even heard them in the vents.

And then he knows, with another chill down his spine, that there’s only one person who it could be, someone better at sneaking around than even he and Natasha, and who could watch him that closely without detection.

He swallows down the twitch of fear that comes with the realization, and makes a mental note to tell Steve he has _really terrifying_ old friends.

Then he takes the bow and finishes his mission.

 

 

\------------------------------------

 

 

_ROMANOV_

 

Natasha hasn’t been in a situation this bad in a _very long_ time.

When she gets back, whichever unlucky SHIELD agent did the recon for this mission is going to learn the meaning of “quaking in their boots.”

She’s nearly out of bullets, which wouldn’t be as much of a problem as it is, if the enemy wasn’t a small branch of HYDRA, and didn’t all have some alien-tech modified handguns that seemed to make the bullets semi-homing towards body heat.  She couldn’t get close enough to turn this into a close-quarters fight, where she would easily have the advantage.

She loses the agents closes on her tail and takes shelter in an alley between two apartment buildings, grimly glad that at least the area didn’t have any civilians in it, or at least if there were any, they didn’t seem to be coming out to get caught in the crossfire.

That was just about the only thing on this mission that matched what she’d been briefed to expect.

She’s checking how many bullets she has left - _not nearly enough_ \- when she hears a clang above her coming from the fire escape of one of the buildings, and instinctively fires at the sound.

Her bullet bounces off the metal railings, but there’s no one there.

She squints through the darkness and sees...a duffle bag?

She glances around and spots a way up the building onto the first level of the fire escape and follows it, warily approaching the bag.

When she throws a loose piece of brick from the wall at it and it doesn’t explode, instead making a quiet metallic clang upon contact, she approaches and opens the main zipper, and finds...a truly impressive number of guns.

Someone could take down a small army with this much firepower.

Which is what she’s been unknowingly sent to do, in fact.

Aware of the distant but approaching sound of her tail, she takes out a few of the guns and replaces her depleted stock, then the dim lighting flickers across a paper in the bag.

She pulls it out and blinks at the type on it.

It’s a ticket to the Russian ballet in New York for the following week.

The corner of her mouth twitches into the faintest smile.

“Спасибо,” she says quietly to the silent alley.

After she takes out all her pursuers, she goes back for the bag.

The SHIELD agent who incorrectly briefed her on the mission literally shakes in his SHIELD-issue boots as she approaches, still carrying the small armory on her back.

 

 

\------------------------------------

 

 

_ROGERS_

 

Steve hasn’t been on many missions since the collapse of SHIELD, half because he’s been rather disillusioned after the fall, and half because he’s been too preoccupied looking for Bucky.

Now he doesn’t trust himself to be able to fully focus on a mission, still reeling with guilt over accidentally shooting Bucky.

When Clint and Natasha tell him that Bucky had left them things mid-mission, that simultaneously makes him feel glad Bucky is trying to befriend the team (and is himself enough to want to help, rather than hurt, them), and makes him feel even more guilty after Natasha theorizes that he is probably trying to placate them to not shoot him again.

(Steve had buried his head in his hands and the others had awkwardly tried to comfort him.)

He isn’t sure if Bucky is going to approach him like the others, so he is startled when a confused-looking waitress comes up to his table holding a cardboard box one morning while he is drinking coffee at a cafe near the tower.

She explains a homeless-looking man had given it to another waitress while she was taking a smoke break in the alley behind the cafe and had asked her to give it to Captain America.

Since this is his regular hangout, the staff has become used to his presence, and they all know who he is.  Things had gotten a lot less awkward after they’d stopped staring at him whenever he’d come in.

But he can tell she isn’t sure about random people leaving things for him.

He assures her it probably isn’t anything dangerous, but he leaves before opening it just in case, holding it as still as he can until he is a safe distance from other people.

(After all, he knows it is probably Bucky, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be someone else, trying to get the drop on one of the more easily-reachable Avengers.)

It is, of course, from Bucky, and inside he finds pristine sets of art supplies, better quality than either of them had ever been able to afford in the 40’s.  They make his eyes water a little, knowing that Bucky has remembered that.

Underneath the supplies, back in the tower, Steve finds a gift receipt with a scrawl on the back, which reads _Oh, and I_ bought _them, punk._

He can’t help himself.  His laughter is loud enough to draw the other Avengers into the common area to ask what happened.

 

 

\------------------------------------

 

 

_THOR_

 

Thor isn’t in the tower that often, usually visiting Asgard or staying with Jane in London.

So Bucky has to leave New York and make his way across the sea for that delivery.

He knows getting his arm through an airport without HYDRA noticing is going to be too difficult to be practical.

He debates hiding on an industrial ship, but he doesn’t want to be on a confined space at sea for that long.

The dilemma is finally solved when Bucky is scouting out a private airfield belonging to some rich CEO or another, and his enhanced hearing (while not as good as Steve’s) allows him to pick up their destination, just outside Heathrow.

Bucky climbs into the small cargo hold beneath the jet after the passengers’ luggage is loaded and hides behind a stack of suitcases until the door closes.  Then he makes a row of suitcases on the floor and lies on them for the several-hours-long ride.  (The suitcases are mangled under the weight of his metal arm.)

He spends the ride silently listening to a small mp3 player he had bought soon after finding one of HYDRA’s safe-houses that stored cash.

The Winter Soldier had seen the occasionally glimpses of technology, so Bucky hadn’t needed to scramble around for too long until he figured out how the internet worked, and he’d loaded the top hits from the last several decades onto the tiny thing, plus any songs he could find that people seemed to insist “must be listened to.”  He’d found several lists people kept sending Captain America via the various Avengers fan sites too, which claimed to summarize all the decades he’d missed in TV shows, movies, music, and books.

He is midway through the 80s when the plane lands, and he silently slips out before the hold door is even fully opened.  No one even glimpses him.

\---

Thor had been the last to hear of the Captain’s past brother-in-arms’ return and gift-giving, but he understands the impulse.

Steve hadn’t been convinced Bucky would be willing to cross an ocean to reach Thor, but Natasha and Barton had reasoned that they’d also been far from the tower (neither would say where) when Bucky had found them.

And so Thor isn’t _too_ surprised to find an unmarked box waiting for him outside the apartment he, Jane and Darcy share whenever he is on the planet and not in the tower.

When he rips the box open, his face splits into a wide grin, and Darcy immediately starts laughing so hard, she has to sit on the couch, holding her sides.

Jane laughs too, but Thor finds himself unable to peel his eyes from his gift long enough to stare at her smile as he usually does.

In the box is more than a dozen boxes of Pop-Tarts.

One of Thor’s favorites, a _seasonal_ flavor.  (Thor had been appalled that they were not manufactured year-round.)

Jane has to call JARVIS while Thor storms around the apartment, praising Steve’s shield-brother, and relates the story.

On the other end of the line, Stark grins, saying that clearly answers the question of “what do you buy a god?”

 

 

\------------------------------------

 

 

_BANNER_

 

Bruce barely leaves the tower anymore, after Tony installed a Hulk-proof room just in case.  If he is feeling out of control, he just sits in the room until he calms down (one way or the other), surrounded by calming colors on the walls and floor (Pepper’s doing).

He likes knowing that he can’t hurt anyone in that room, and that even if the other guy emerged elsewhere in the tower, there is always at least one other Avenger there to help contain him.

He hasn’t hurt a single civilian since moving in.

And so it takes several weeks before Bucky realizes (unknown to the Avengers) that delivering a gift to Banner isn’t going to likely take place outside the tower.

Which is how, one morning a little over three months since Steve’s art supply delivery (long enough for Steve to start ranting to any Avenger who will listen that he must be injured or in trouble or recaptured by HYDRA), Bruce walks into the private common area built into his floor in the tower to find a small box near the center of a low table in the center of the room.

The whole room is “as zen as a monk with a minor rage problem could want,” as Tony puts it, so there’s not much furniture aside from the table, surrounded by cushions on the floor, with an empty teapot and a cup in the center.

And so the box, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a red string that has clearly been tied by some shop or other, clearly stands out as a new addition.

(The several weeks Bruce had spent aware that someone might try to slip him a gift, as the other Avengers had all alerted each other each time Bucky had made a delivery, is what prevents the other guy from making an appearance in response to the intrusion.)

Still, Bruce’s eyes widen when he opens the box and finds it stuffed full of an extremely rare tea he’s been drinking, which helps slow his heartbeat and keep the other guy in check.

The tea is both expensive and almost impossible to buy, seeing as the plant it is made from grows on only one mountain in the world, on a cliffside so steep (and destabilized by recent seismic activity in the area), very few people are willing to pick it anymore.

Bruce hasn’t been able to buy more for nearly a year, so he’s been carefully stretching out the last of his supply.  No matter how much Tony was willing to spend, no one had been willing to pick that tea in ages.

Which is what causes a suspicion to grow in Bruce’s mind, and he picks up some of the dried leaves to examine them more closely.

Sure enough, a few of the leaves still had traces of the roots attached, something a shop would never allow.

Which means Bucky had picked this _himself_ , and likely dried it too.  (Bruce didn’t know how he’d known, but he’d done a good job of it, too.)

Upon shifting some of the leaves, a denser object in the box catches his eye too, and he freezes.

The ex-assassin turned extreme-rock-climbing tea-picker has somehow managed to bring back a _seemingly viable_ seed.

_Those_ were only produced by one out of every thousand or so plants on the cliffside.  And most froze too quickly to germinate.

Bruce holds it in his palm and _stares_.

This friend of the Captain’s is _insane_.

(Once he snaps out of his shock, Bruce half-runs to his lab to get the seed somewhere safe while he replicates the environment it needs to grow.)

 

 

\------------------------------------

 

 

_STARK_

 

Bucky’s lucky he has practice on breaking into the tower to deliver Banner’s gift before he has to try for Stark’s.

The bastard has double the security on his floor and the lab as anywhere else, even Banner’s rooms.

(Bucky can’t really blame him.  After all, anyone who messed with the Hulk, from what he’d found online, was begging for death.  Far more people would be willing to attempt to steal Stark tech than mess with the Hulk.)

It takes him a few days after getting back from that _freezing_ mountain to break past enough of Stark’s AI’s security features to get in and out undetected.

It takes him several more days to break into Stark’s floor.

Then it takes another few days before he realizes Stark never seems to leave his lab and hasn’t even seen the gift yet.

The rest of the week is spent finding a way into the lab.  (All the time overhearing the Avengers, but mostly Steve, worrying about where he might be.  The - rather large, by this point - part of his brain which was Bucky Barnes again found this incredibly amusing as he ghosted around them, never being spotted even by the ex-Red Room assassin he vaguely recognized.)

\---

Tony is cursing his very expensive coffee maker when there is a faint knock on the door.

"Come in," he calls, wondering why JARVIS didn't announce whichever Avenger it was.

After a moment, no one appears, and JARVIS says, "Sir, no one is outside the door."

Tony frowns, not immediately thinking of their ex-HYDRA Santa Claus.

When he crosses to the door and it opens, he finds the hallway empty.  Frowning, he turned around to find a box in the middle of the workshop floor, with coffee grounds, a new filter (the old one had gone bad and he didn't have a spare around, thus the cursing), and -

"Pizza!" Tony practically screams.

"Sir, I don't think that's a -" JARVIS starts, but Tony is already taking a bite.

Then he thinks about where he is and pauses.

"Hey J, how the hell did the Red Scare get past you?  Twice, I guess, after Big Green's tea."

"I do not know, Sir."  JARVIS sounds abashed.  "A full system scan does not show anything non-operational.”

Tony frowns.

"Hey, Tall Dark and Scary," he spoke to the room, "if you're still around, want to help me patch the holes in my security system?"

There is no reply, so Tony shrugs and goes to replace the coffee filter.

And immediately turns back around when there is a metallic _thunk_ from the table behind him.

Years of practice in front of TV cameras lets Tony not flinch to find a small knife buried (with quite a lot of force) in one of his work tables, point down and quivering, pinning down a note that just has "Sure," scrawled on it.

Tony grins.

(Bucky could swear he heard JARVIS give a nearly-silent sigh.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Спасибо - "Thank you" in Russian (according to Google)


	6. System Tests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to post this a few hours early, since you all had to wait a week. Thanks so much for all the lovely comments, you people keep making my day. I grin like a maniac every time.
> 
> Despite the con over last weekend (and a fire alarm going off, and getting food poisoning - not fun), I managed to finish the next fic I was working on, so that will go up next. (My beta hates me, I swear. That one is whump-heavy.)
> 
> I'm also working on another fic, which I'm still plotting out. So, question. Do you guys want me to start posting that fic despite not all the chapters being written (which lets me take your input into account), or wait until I have them all done, like the one that will be released after In The Crosshairs ends? (I do have a decent idea of where the fic is going, so I'm not going to just leave you all hanging with an unfinished plot.) Let me know in the comments.

For the next several weeks, Bucky and Tony are engaged in a massive tower-wide upheaval of JARVIS’ security systems, and while at first, Bucky can break in fairly quickly, once Tony starts filling in the security holes, it takes longer and longer for Bucky to break through.

Each time he does, Bucky leaves food or coffee for Tony, and once it takes Bucky a full two weeks to breach Tony’s workshop, they switch to the rest of the tower.

Tony does alert the other Avengers first, and Barton gets a gleam in his eye and spends more time than usual in the vents, but even he never glimpses Bucky, to his disappointment.

Bucky leaves food in whatever area he is attempting to breach, and quickly starts learning the Avengers’ preferences when they give feedback, generally speaking to the ceiling or wherever they seem to think he is lurking after his latest offering appears.  (They’ve never been right yet, although a few times they got too close for Bucky’s comfort, and he quickly vanishes into another part of the tower then that happens.)

When Barton leaves a NERF gun and a note with a dare on it in one of the vents, Bucky accepts the challenge by rigging it to shoot him in the middle of breakfast on the common floor, when Bucky is nowhere near the area.  (Bucky has the foresight to warn Banner beforehand via a note left in his rooms, just to be careful.  Bruce cracks a smile when he reads it and assures the seemingly empty room that the other guy won’t make an appearance.)

When the NERF dart pegs Barton almost dead-center in the forehead halfway through the meal, everyone stares at the suction-cupped dart for a moment in shock.

The silence is broken when Banner can’t hold in an undignified snort of laughter, hiding his smile behind his coffee mug.

The other Avengers stare at him for a moment, then their eyes swerve to the nearest ceiling vent.

Barton lunges for it, pulling the dart off, but is stopped short when he sees a tiny camera placed just inside the grate.  There’s a note next to it, with _got you_ written on it in the scratchy handwriting which has been Bucky’s since he became the Winter Soldier.

(Bucky streamed the feed to a StarkTab he’d acquired from Steve’s floor upon noticing he never used it, and if anyone had been near that particular service elevator, they might have heard his ghostly, slightly hoarse laughter from somewhere in the elevator shaft.)

Tony finds the video sent to another of his StarkTabs later that day, and sets it to play on loop any time Barton walks into a room with a screen in it for the rest of the week.  This sparks a prank war between Tony, Barton, and Bucky, to the chagrin and annoyance of all the others.  (Except Thor, who is still in London.)

Several NERF battles with an invisible target, pressure-triggered noise-making plates in the vents (which Barton triggers but Bucky somehow always avoids - Barton insists this is due to supersoldier powers, and therefore is cheating), one instance of tar-and-feathers, and three very annoyed and confused live chickens later, Barton concedes the prank war, and it is left to Tony and Bucky to duke it out.

Steve views all this with a despairing sort of amusement, but even he laughs when Barton lets out a squawk one morning and falls out of a vent onto the floor of the living room, covered in glitter.

Tony laughs the hardest.

“Stark, I said I was out,” Barton half-growls, trying to wipe the glitter off him, but failing completely.

Tony is doubled over against the kitchen counter, and it takes him a moment before he can answer.

“That was set for the assassin in the belfry, not for you.  It’s not my fault you fell for it!  Good luck getting that off, by the way, I got some on my hand and it took me a week,” he adds, laughing again.

Even Natasha cracks a small grin, and Barton looks at her like she’d personally betrayed him.

“No pity, not from any one of you.  Some friends you are,” he says sulkily, before stalking off to his floor to make a vain attempt at washing it out.

Tony watches him go with a grin.

“Hey Cap, think I should have told him water just makes it stick longer?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but can’t hide the smile on his face either.

Tony laughs again a few days later when his next delivery (more coffee and burgers this time) has the faintest trace of pink glitter on the box.

He has the distinct feeling that the room is scowling at him in response.

Bucky’s revenge is replacing all of Tony’s coffee grounds a day later with decaf, and then spiking only _his_ food in the fridge with hot sauce made from the hottest peppers in the world.  Barton nearly becomes collateral damage to that prank as well, when he attempts to steal some of Tony’s food, but Bucky takes pity on him and throws a fork at him out of one of the vents.  The fork flies right between two of his outstretched fingers and bounces off one of the refrigerator shelves, and Barton _carefully_ puts down the food and shuts the fridge.

Barton is extremely grateful a few hours later when Tony actually eats something and discovers both his coffee and his food has been corrupted.  And that Bucky vanished the last of their milk.

This continues for a while, as the entire tower becomes harder and harder for Bucky to break into.  He starts spending far more time in the tower than out as a result, as gaining entrance to the tower takes him far longer than just staying hidden from JARVIS’ sensors.

When each break-in takes Bucky about ten days, Steve explodes at dinner one night after someone mentions it was delivered by Bucky.

“Jesus Christ, Bucky!  I know you can hear me!  Just come talk to us already!”

Steve storms off to his floor while the others look around uncomfortably.  Sam, who’d come to visit only a few days earlier, glances around and then stares pointedly at one of the vent grates in the ceiling (missing where Bucky actually is by more than thirty feet, well within distance of an escape route in case one of them tries to catch a glimpse of him).

He stares for several seconds, then makes a “follow me” motion and walks away.  Bucky complies silently, and a few minutes later they’re both out of earshot of the rest of the group, albeit Bucky is still in the vents.

“Hey, man, uh, I don’t know if you remember me from the bridge or the helicarrier, or on the missions earlier.  I’m Sam, and a friend of Steve’s...like you are.”

Sam paused, obviously a little uncomfortable with talking to the ceiling.

“Look, I work at the VA so I know a lot of veterans.  If you’re not ready to talk to anyone, no one can make you.  But you need to know Steve really needs you around...in person, not sneaking around in the vents.”

When there was no reply again, Sam held up his hands in a half-shrug, half-peacekeeping motion.

“Hey, I’ve said my piece.  I’ll leave you to your...whatever you’re doing here.”

Bucky sits there for a while, thinking, but he doesn’t feel comfortable with actually talking to Ste- to the _Avengers_ yet.

He _knows_ the shot was an accident.  Even the part of him which is still the Winter Soldier knows that now.

But he’s been a phantom assassin for far longer than he knew Steve Rogers, and it’s harder than he ever thought to come in from the cold.

 


	7. Deja Vu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can also be known as "You've Got to Be Shitting Me, Not Again," "This Author is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," and "Seriously?"
> 
> AKA if you liked me before I don't think you do anymore. But hey, enough of you commented that I decided to grant you your double (same-day!) updates, and the last chapter will go up Sunday. If people reply (and answer the question in the end notes), you may get it a day early instead. XD

The Avengers (minus Thor, still in Asgard, and Sam, working with a veteran at the VA) are halfway through movie night when the alarms start going off.

Instantly everyone leaps to their feet, ready to sprint for their weapons.

“J?” Tony asks tensely.

“Sir, I am detecting multiple intruders attempting to breach the building on the first floor, and my sensor indicate a SHIELD-issue quinjet is approaching.”

“HYDRA,” Steve curses.  “Where the hell is Bucky?”

Tony throws coms at each Avenger and they bolt off into the tower, gathering their weapons.

“JARVIS, do you see any sign of our invisible friend?” Tony asks over the coms, not expecting any sign of their friendly neighborhood assassin.

“Actually, yes, sir.  Sergeant Barnes is engaging the HYDRA operatives in the stairwell between the third and fourth floors.”

A _thump_ noise sounds over the coms, and Tony has the sneaking suspicion that Steve just bumped into a wall in shock.

“You have a visual?” Steve barks.

“Unfortunately, the cameras were shot by the HYDRA agents before the Sergeant arrived.  Only the motion detectors are still operational in that area.”

By this time, all the Avengers except Banner are each in their suits, and either in the elevators, or flying (in Tony’s case).  Banner has retreated to the Hulk-proof room Tony built into his floor, but still has the earpiece in so he can know if the Hulk becomes needed.

Tony flies down the outside of the building then through a window above the fifth floor, making his way to the stairwell, blasting any HYDRA agents he comes across.

He beats the elevator there by a few seconds, just long enough to catch a glimpse of the Winter Soldier knifing the last HYDRA agent in the stairwell.

Tony’s just opened his mouth when the metal arm flashes, and a knife misses Tony’s helmet by inches, burying itself in a HYDRA agent coming out a stairwell door.

“Nice shot,” he says, keeping his voice steady and turning back around, but he’s already gone.

Tony rejoins the fray on the first floor, HYDRA still overrunning the lobby, Steve and the others fighting their way out of the elevator.

They each catch occasional glimpses of the Winter Soldier - only Steve can think of him as Bucky while he’s taking out agents with such deadly precision before disappearing again - but no one can keep eyes on him for long.

It’s a far cry from the way he fought on the highway in D.C. or in the hellicarrier, and even more terrifying.

_This_ is the phantom assassin the world has learned to fear.

The fight is a long one, HYDRA really seeming to break out the agents for this fight, and the battle ranges over the lowest dozen floors of the tower.

When Tony is taking out the HYDRA quinjet with Natasha’s help and Steve and Barton have just finished clearing another floor, working their way downwards, there’s a small explosion from somewhere below them, and the lights in the tower flicker for a long moment.

“JARVIS?” Tony and Steve ask at the same time, all four Avengers heading for the source of the explosion.

“Sir, one of the HYDRA agents set off the explosion - the device is not in the remaining cameras’ ranges - and I believe the Sergeant was caught in the blast.  He came into view on one camera long enough to determine he was seriously but not fatally wounded.  He is still fighting the HYDRA agents.”

Steve and Natasha both curse, sprinting even faster.

They arrive on the second floor, where the explosion had ripped a hole in the walls, ceiling, and floor, just in time to see the Winter Soldier jumping out the gap in the wall.

“NO!” Steve screams, leaping after him.

Steve lands on his feet on the street below in time to see a black van speeding away.

He’d lost him.

Again.

By the time Tony arrives, only seconds later, the van has disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So while you hate me, please comment a reply as to whether or not you guys want to me to start publishing one of the two next fics I have (both whumpy, I'm sorry...kinda) before I actually finish writing the whole thing, since that lets me adapt the plot to the feedback you all give me, or if you'd prefer I wait until I'm done?
> 
> (I have skeletoned the important plot points already, so I'm not flying blind. But your feedback might change the ending...cause y'all aren't going to like me, ahahahaha...oops. And another fic is already done, and will go up after Crosshairs ends.)
> 
> (Since the next two fics are both whumpy, I'll also be putting up shorts that are more funny, like apocalypse!Avengers.)


	8. MIA

The Avengers have to regroup before they can find Bucky, so they all gather, defeated expression on their faces, in their common area again.

Sam, Natasha, and Tony are sent on recon duty, combing the city for any sign of HYDRA, who had melted back into the shadows again.

When they do catch sight of HYDRA again, it isn’t subtle.

In fact, it is on the 6 o’clock news.

Steve had been cooking in the kitchen when the news came on, and he nearly crushes the pot he’d been holding.

The rest of the Avengers arrive almost instantly, in time to see the Winter Soldier fighting with HYDRA in the streets on the outskirts of the city.

“Oh my god, they didn’t take him.  He _hunted_ them,” Banner said, staring around at the others in surprise.

Then there is a flurry of movement as everyone runs for their bikes or cars, weapons already within reach this time (as they had been since last time), Tony and Sam taking to the skies.

Tony keeps the news feed running in the bottom of his HUD, and the fight is in the Winter Soldier’s favor despite being vastly outnumbered, and Tony makes a mental note to review the footage later - this is the first time he’s seen the deadly grace that is the Soldier’s fighting style post-D.C..

But the fight is slowly tilting in HYDRA’s favor.

The metal arm is clearly malfunctioning, and it makes Tony’s hands ache to get ahold of it.  It’s literally spitting sparks at this point, after one of the HYDRA agents manages to shoot a gap in the armor where there’s a rip in the metal plating.

The Soldier is still holding his ground, though, and Tony can hear Steve muttering to himself over the coms, praying Bucky can hold out.

He’s actually doing a very good job for someone in his state.  A normal man would have died from the injuries Tony can see on camera alone, and the video is being taken from quite far away.

They’re going to make it, he thinks.

But the Winter Soldier sees the kid before Tony does.

One of the HYDRA agents turns towards a young boy standing near the edge of the crowd which has formed, watching the fight.

The agent aims an odd-looking gun at the boy and fires.

The Soldier intercepts the hit, losing the smooth grace of his movements as he jumps in the way.  But no bullet pierces his armor or his skin.

For a moment, Tony thinks the agent missed or Bucky was too late.

Then the camera zooms in and Tony sees the device.  It looks like a modified version of the Widow’s Bites, and judging from the visible electric sparks emanating from it, the charge has been spiked far above Natasha’s.

“ _Shit_ ,” Tony says, and is bombarded by the worried inquiries of the team.

This time, on camera, the Winter Soldier goes down.

Once again, they can’t make it in time.

\---

This time, there is no trace of the Winter Soldier or HYDRA for weeks.

Steve is a wreck, unable to even go out and smash his way through HYDRA bases as he could before Bucky had reappeared, because he and Sam had already methodically destroyed every base they currently knew the whereabouts of.

He spends all his time training in the gym at the tower, having asked JARVIS to monitor all news feeds and tell him if there’s even the slightest clue.

Natasha takes Barton and they start combing through whatever contacts they have who are still alive and could possibly know anything.

Tony and Banner stay in their labs, working on anything they can focus on long enough to complete.  Both of their productivity levels are far lower than normal, worried for their not-quite-teammate.

They all realize how much they had grown used to having a phantom in the attic.  The tower is a much lonelier place without him, now.

A few days into the fifth week of Bucky’s latest ghost act, with no leads panning out, JARVIS filters out an unexplained explosion at a manufacturing plant outside Tolyatti, in Russia.

Steve immediately takes Barton and Natasha and investigates, but the explosion took out the entire building, and there’s nothing but rubble, with no clues pointing to HYDRA or Bucky.

When they return, there’s another two weeks of radio silence with regards to HYDRA.

Then, when all the Avengers currently on the planet (in other words, everyone except Thor) are in the tower, most sitting around the common areas, pouring over HYDRA files, while Tony worked down in his workshop.

Tony’s been working for somewhere between 42 and 50 hours straight when he turns around to reach for another tool he needs and promptly shrieks and jumps several inches in the air when he finds Bucky himself standing only a few feet away.

He looks far less stony-faced than in the images they have of him, the most recent of which are from HYDRA’s file on him.  There’s humanity back in his eyes, albeit weighted down with the ghost of the Winter Soldier.

His left arm holds Tony’s gaze far longer than is polite, as he picks up on each dent or scratch, cataloging the rather long list of damages, far more than the Captain had described after the destruction of the Triskelion.

When he meets Bucky’s eyes again, there’s a wry smile on his face.

“Stark,” he says simply.

“Cap is gonna kill you,” Tony says, regaining his composure.  “How the hell did you get away from -”

The door to the workshop opens and Barton walks in, grinning like a cat with a mouse.

“Stark, you’re busted.  I just saw the whooooole thing.”  He turned to Bucky, ignoring Tony’s exclamation and death threats.  “Congrats on getting Stark to scream like a girl,” he says with a grin.

Bucky grins back, and if his grin is slightly off from lack of use, no one says anything.

“Also, I’ve been a fan of yours since I heard the stories of Captain America’s sniper partner as a kid.  You were my hero, man,” Barton adds, as Bucky suddenly has a hard time meeting his eyes.

“I’m not,” he starts, but the door opens again and the other Avengers come in.

Steve practically barrels into him while the others laugh at Bucky’s discomfort until he pulls away.

Then the yelling starts, and Tony goes to get popcorn.

\---

When the yelling finally ends, Barton proposes the Scare the Shit Out of Stark Games to Bucky, and Bucky grins while Tony shouts threats at all of them and chases them out of his workshop.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky let himself get captured since he knew HYDRA wouldn’t stop attacking the tower to get to him. Then he killed his captors and everyone in the base, and hunted down the smaller bases he found using their servers before coming back. There wasn’t a great way for me to actually fit that into the story without lengthening it tediously.
> 
> The Scare the Shit Out of Stark Games do take place, to Tony’s frustration, and Bucky and Barton are stuck in a draw after Tony starts building an immunity to their scare attempts until Natasha gets involved. She wins without a debate. They don’t speak of it again, but Bucky, Barton and Tony reconvene their prank war. I may come back and write some of this eventually, but if anyone has specific prank ideas, you can comment them or send them via Tumblr, where I’m taking prompts. My username is tiredtypingandtea, and I’m rarely on it, but I have alerts set up for messages.
> 
> \---
> 
> Also, in case you're only following this fic, I've put up a couple chapters of Apocavengers, my zombie fic, and It's Not Cosmetic, the I'm-not-done-writing-it fic I mentioned before. I will continue posting twice a week with Lullaby, my next completed fic, starting this week.
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking with this fic! I'll be writing more Bucky soon, so if INC or Lullaby aren't your cups of tea, hopefully you'll like the next ones in the pipeline. Your comments and kudos keep me writing, so thanks again for all the encouragement. It means a lot to me.
> 
> Edit: I've added a poll to help me figure out which ships my readers are enjoying the most. It won't stop me from writing multiple ships because Tony and Bucky are my shipping bicycles, but I'm curious! http://www.poll-maker.com/poll342038xB2234Ff5-13


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